


oblivious.

by anomalousity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Oh my god so much Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3456761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalousity/pseuds/anomalousity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t turn around after the crumpled sheet of paper hits the back of his head the first time, or the second, or the third. He’s certainly not going to turn for the forth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oblivious.

He doesn’t turn around after the crumpled sheet of paper hits the back of his head the first time, or the second, or the third. He’s certainly not going to turn for the forth.

There are half-whispered mutterings of “Cas” and “C’mon, look angel-face” that he’s studiously ignoring as he works through the equation sheet and fixes unbalanced equations. Already he’s been subject to Jo Harvelle asking him to give Dean Winchester a chance, and stop giving him the cold shoulder.

The cold shoulder, it would seem, is an apt response to being accused of giving the cold shoulder.

Chemistry is Castiel’s favorite subject. He likes working out realistic problems, and likes learning how reactions happen that will have an effect on life and reveal more and more information regarding biology, physics, even mechanics. It’s clear, complicit, and easy to understand, but beautifully elegant in its execution and decoding. Castiel equates it to classic art, in terms of its preciousness.

Others don’t seem share his view.

The man in question, who has been pelting him with crumpled notes since the beginning of the semester, the one senior in a junior level class, Dean Winchester, is either trying to make Castiel commit premeditated homicide, or looking for a tutor, or interested in belittling those who qualify as nerds, i.e., Castiel.

He’s arrogant, he’s brute, he’s unbelievably intelligent in physics and calculus, and talented on the baseball field (maybe diamond? Castiel has never been particularly interested in athletics), and he’s a pain in Castiel’s ass.

Castiel works through the rest of his sheet without pause, even when a rude finger taps him between his shoulder blades and slowly slides a warm trail down his spine when he ignores it. He defines combustion reactions, and redox reactions, and displacement reactions without difficulty, only bothering to sigh and run his fingers through his hair when gentle fingertips brush over the nape of his neck accompanied by the soft whisper of a name that is a shortened version of his own.

He should probably ask Mr. Raphael to let him change seats again, but he knows it’ll be bust. The last time he did that, Dean Winchester moved with him.

By the time the bell for the conclusion of class rings, Castiel is at his patience’s end, and before he can grab his bag, Dean Winchester is hitching it over his shoulder and staring down at Castiel with expectant, eager eyes.

“Can I help-”

“No,” Castiel interrupts, making a grab for his bag and failing when Dean shifts his stance. He sighs and rubs at one of his temples. “I don’t need any of your help.”

Dean just shrugs and hands him his bag, watching intently as Castiel shrugs it on and adjusts his shirt from where it’s ridden up his belly. He doesn’t blush when Dean’s eyes dart down to his waist, but it’s a close thing. He clears his throat and nods towards nothing in particular before heading out the door and into the hallway.

Dean, of course, is hot on his heels.

“So,” Dean says, in that ridiculously deep voice of his. Castiel is aware of how cliché it is to obsess over the depth and timber of a man’s voice, but he doesn’t care. It’s irksome, frankly. “I was thinking you and me could put together a study group for our next midterm.”

Castiel snorts. “So,” he replies, mocking Dean’s casual tone, “I was thinking the exact opposite.”

“You’re kinda rude for a nerd.”

“And you’re kind of an asshole for- Wait, sorry, you’re just an asshole.” Castiel turns to shoot Dean a glare. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should really be-”

“Come over tonight,” Dean interrupts, nonplussed.

Castiel doesn’t as he replies, “Not a chance, Dean Winchester.”

He doesn’t think to notice that sometime in the middle of their argument Dean had reached over and grabbed his hand, like it was a normal thing for them to do. As soon as he starts off, Dean’s fingers catch around his wrist and he stumbles to a stop.

Truthfully, it frustrates Castiel that he let his guard down enough to miss the gesture.

He turns to fix the man with a cold glare. “Let me go.”

Dean sets his jaw in tense obstinacy. “You’re the one who won’t let go, Cas,” he replies, looking down at the hand that he doesn’t have wrapped around Castiel’s wrist.

Castiel stares in surprise at his fingers knitted through Dean’s; he has no recollection of doing it and, he assumes, no intention of doing so. He wiggles his fingers a little between Dean’s, and tries not to sigh when Dean’s thumb swipes over the tendons flashing at the back of his hand.

He has to force himself to let go. He tries not to wince when he does so. Going by the pink on Dean’s cheeks, as well as the soft smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, he fails.

“I, uh, I should get to class,” he murmurs, extracting his arm from Dean’s grasp and putting a good three feet between their bodies. His chest feels a little too tight, his lungs a little too clenched. Perhaps his face is warm too, but that could be written off as mere embarrassment. He did, after all, make a spectacle of himself in the middle of the hallway.

He pointedly does not look back when Dean murmurs, “See you around,” as he stumbles in the direction of his Classical Studies class.

-

He definitely does _not_ think about the warm, calloused press of Dean Winchester’s thumb rubbing half-circles on the back of his hand, and he most certainly doesn’t rub the same place with his fingertips all through the rest of the day.

-

“I mean, it’s just a stupid class, Castiel,” Meg says, chewing with her mouth. Castiel thinks it’s gross, but doesn’t say anything. “Just one class for this one semester, and he’ll be graduating and you’ll be free of the oh-so-hard-to-dissuade Dean Winchester.”

Castiel sips at his juice before asking, “Hard to dissuade?”

Meg shrugs and waves a hand through the air. “He’s been pretty adamant these past few months, Cas, even you can’t be so oblivious.”

Oblivious? He’s never really associated himself with the word before, but there’s always room for consideration. “What do you mean?” he asks, curious.

By the unamused set to her eyes and lips, Castiel figures he might be a little oblivious.

She rolls her eyes and rests her chin in the palm of her hand. “Please, Cas, he’s practically been mooning over you since we had introductory biology last fall,” she says, fully convinced that that is fact. “He draws hearts on all of his notes to you. Hearts. I’d say it was the most high school thing I’ve ever seen if we weren’t in high school. Hell, I might say it anyways.”

“… He signs them with hearts?”

“Oh God, that’s what you’re concerned about?”

-

There aren’t any crumpled balls of paper hitting the back of his head.

Castiel works out the thermochemical problems quickly. He doesn’t have to pause to sigh, or frustratingly run his fingers through his hair, or try to conceal a shiver after a warm finger trails a warmer trail down his spine. He finishes within the first ten minutes of work time and ends up staring at the wall for the remaining half-hour of class.

When he stands and wagers a glance to the chair behind his own, he finds it vacant.

-

“Winchester? Dean Winchester? You’re needed at the principal’s office.”

He hears the scrape of Dean’s chair pushing against the linoleum tiles of the chemistry classroom. Castiel is tempted to turn around but he holds still, hoping not to alert Dean to his presence, now that he seems to have forgotten Castiel entirely.

It’s been two weeks. Dean Winchester hasn’t hit Castiel with a crumpled up note to the back of the head in two weeks. Hasn’t drawn a finger down Castiel’s spine, hasn’t drawn him hearts or prepositioned him with lewd questions about study groups or going to his house after school.

Two weeks, and Dean Winchester is all Castiel has been able to think about.

They got their midterms back that morning, and Castiel, as per usual, got perfect marks. He saw Dean’s as he was passing back the exams for his row and noticed that he’d scored one point better; where Castiel neglected to answer the extra credit question, Dean had went above and beyond.

Perhaps he’d been serious in his requests for Castiel to tutor him. Maybe he’d even found another tutor, one that helped him get those marks. Castiel doesn’t like the thought; he feels almost like he’s getting punched in the gut, or as though something large and heavy were pressing down on his chest at the mere thought of Dean working with someone else at Dean’s house, perhaps in Dean’s room, probably on Dean’s bed-

Castiel has forced himself to stop thinking about Dean Winchester’s bed three days ago. He’s not going to start again.

He made his bed, and he supposes he’ll lie in it. It was his decision not to tutor Dean; it was his decision to refuse Dean’s offers.

He made his bed, but oh does he regret making it the way he did.

-

“Milton? Castiel Milton? You’re needed in the principal’s office.”

He glances up at his English teacher, waiting for her to nod back her permission before he’s pushing out of his chair and heading to the principal’s office. Truthfully, Castiel has never been to the principal’s office. He’d enlisted Meg’s help in getting him there, after all.

The prank, as it were, had been mostly Meg and her friend Garth’s idea. Castiel had the chemistry knowledge to construct something similar to a cherry bomb, though with a much smaller explosive coefficient. They’d suggested he build a few and set them off in the boys’ bathrooms throughout the school. The plan had gone off without a hitch; school had been canceled for three days in a row while repairmen came in and re-puttied the tiny holes where the porcelain chambers had leaked water throughout the whole school.

Garth was the one with connections to Sam Winchester, and Sam Winchester had notified him that Dean was an assistant to the athletics director and was helping coordinate the baseball, football, and dance teams.

Meg was the one to put two-and-two together and create a need for Castiel to be around Dean for more than fifty-five minutes at a time.

He holds his head high as he walks down the hallway, ignoring the scorning faces of teachers and the wolf whistles from degenerate students which, he supposes, includes him now. He makes his way into the principal’s office and tries not to flinch when she closes the door behind him.

He isn’t surprised when he’s suspended from school the week following.

Still, he exits the office with a smile and makes his way towards Mr. Gabriel’s office. He pauses just before the doorway, before glancing in.

He finds Dean with his cheek cradled in his hand, checking off spreadsheets and writing notes in the margins. From where he’s standing, Castiel can see the freckles that trail over the bridge of his nose, extend up to his hairline and down to his neck. He feels ridiculous for trying to find adjectives to describe the pretty reddish-brown of Dean’s hair, or the beautiful hazel-green of his eyes. He feels even more ridiculous for openly ogling, so he straightens his shoulders and steps into the doorway wholly, before knocking on the frame.

Dean glances up with a frown that quickly shifts into a passive, bemused smile. “Hi, Cas,” he says, shuffling his papers and dropping his pen on the desk.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel replies. He’s blushing, that’s why his face is always so warm. Meg had a point with the obliviousness argument.

Dean beckons him in with a wave of his hand. “What’s up?” he asks. “Thinking of signing up for a sport?”

Castiel snorts before he can stop himself, and Dean doesn’t hesitate in shooting him a glare. Castiel tries not to associate the word ‘adorable’ with it, but he definitely does anyways. He clears his throat and replies, “No, Dean, I am not.”

That brings down Dean’s false charm at least. His smile drops and his eyes are confused as he appraises Castiel with thinly veiled suspicion. “Then what do you want?” he asks, sharp and to the point.

Castiel can match that. “You,” he replies. He doesn’t mock him this time.

Dean, however, just frowns. “… for what?” he asks, running his fingers through his hair.

Oh, yeah, Castiel wasn’t the only oblivious one. He shrugs and fiddles with the tail of his shirt as he says, “Oh, just normal things.” He can’t look in Dean’s eyes as he verifies, “Cuddling, kissing and maybe sex if that’s something you’re okay with, mutual respect and caring, hand-holding, _love_ , and the certainty that the relationship will last at least until you go off to college.” He claps his hands together and makes a sound that he supposes could sound like an explosion to untrained ears. “The whole shebang.”

Castiel is definitely blushing. He glances up from his hands to Dean’s face and finds him looking utterly flabbergasted. He looks back down to his hands for a while, then back up when Dean is silent for a moment too long. At least Castiel isn’t the only one blushing.

Dean, however, finds his words before Castiel can and says, intelligently, “Uh.”

“Ditto.”

“No, Cas, uh-”

“Oh God, I shouldn’t have blown up the toilets for this-”

“I mean, I’ve loved you since- Wait that was _you_?”

“I’m getting _suspended_ , Dean and all you can say is- You love me?”

“Of _course_ I do, Cas, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“That I was imagining things-”

Dean sighs and pushes back in his chair before walking around his desk and stopping a hairsbreadth from Castiel. From here, Castiel can count his eyelashes and the barely-there tint of light blond whiskers starting to grow on his chin.  From here, Castiel can feel the heat of his chest against his own, and when Dean’s hands wrap around Castiel’s biceps, he flinches against Dean’s warm body.

Dean’s body, which is connected to Dean’s head, which is shaking disapprovingly. “If you wanted to tell me that, you could’ve just told me.”

He realizes that now, of course, but what can say? He’s more oblivious than he thought. He smirks and leans forward, letting his lips brush against the sharp line of Dean’s jaw as he replies, “I am a man of extremes, Dean Winchester.”

Dean doesn’t even bother hiding his shiver at the touch, and ducks his head so his mouth is more within Castiel’s reach. “I kind of got that,” he replies, before leaning down and catching Castiel’s lips in his own.

It’s not a great kiss; hell, Castiel’s had two kisses before this and they were both better, in terms of quality. They’re both clumsy and awkward, and neither of them opens their mouths, so it’s more of a press of lips than anything else.

Then Dean reaches up and threads his fingers through Castiel’s hair, right where his godforsaken notes hit him each and every single day of the semester, and Castiel sighs just as Dean sucks his lower lip between his mouth.

And that, that grappling sense of euphoria just before you fall, the flash of heat beneath your skin before going out into subzero temperatures, that is the feeling coursing through Castiel’s body.

They get caught after a few minutes of what can only be called making out against the athletic director’s desk. Mr. Gabriel is all smirks and perhaps a little too suggestive innuendos as he kicks them out. They end up ditching the last twenty minutes of school to make out in the back of Dean’s car, and go back to Dean’s house where Dean introduces Castiel as “the guy” and Mrs. Winchester pulls him into a hug just before smacking him upside the head.

“Are you evil, or are you just stupid?” she asks, before pulling him into another hug and inviting him to stay forever.

-

As it turns out, Dean talked about him at home a lot, and had been fostering a pretty nasty crush since the beginning of the school year.

And, as it turns out, they stick together even when Dean heads off to college. Castiel just meets him there a year later on academic scholarship to study chemistry. They end up in the same introductory class during Dean’s sophomore year, and Castiel’s freshman year.

On his first day of class, a crumpled up piece of paper hits him in the back of his head. He turns around, looking for the culprit with an array of insults on the tip of his tongue when he finds Dean seated right behind him, a wide grin on his face and a pinched nervousness at the corners of his eyes.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, grinning.

“Read it,” Dean replies, nodding to the ball of paper resting on the floor in front of Castiel.

He picks it up and smoothes it out as good as he can before looking at the qPCR photograph that Dean had tossed his way, with a little pink heart at the corner of the photo.

The fifty DNA fragments ran perfectly as to spell out, “Will you marry me?”

When he turns back around Dean’s fiddling with a velvet box, cheeks as red as a tomato. He meets Castiel’s eyes as soon as he gets it open and all but shoves it in his face with a muttered, “Oh my God, I’m sorry, fuck.”

Castiel, biting his lower lip so he doesn’t break into laughter as their professor walks into the classroom, reaches up and takes the box out of Dean’s hands and holds out his left hand in reply.

“Of course I will, you big dork,” he replies, watching as Dean’s face goes from surprised to pink and satisfied.

Dean slides the ring on Castiel’s finger just before their professor starts her lecture by pointing at them with her laser pointer and saying that some people just get chemistry.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at me on [tumblr](http://ceciliatallis.co.vu).


End file.
